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Fitz doesn’t take his wedding ring off after they lose her.
Not that May ever expected him to. People don’t get past a love like that.
She thinks of a cork she’s held onto all these years that belonged to one final bottle of Haig.
-
Daisy cracked the Earth.
Or at least, that’s what they say. Quake, destroyer of worlds.
May doesn’t know when it got so tangled, so far away from the truth, but she understands why it happened. It’s easy to digest the idea that one damaged person lost control. It’s harder to remember how they all failed.
-
She finds herself stuck in an odd ritual.
She was never religious, but every week she buys as many white candles as she can manage. She doesn’t want to run out when, inevitably, all the wax is gone and they stop being made.
Every Friday night, after Robin has shut herself in her bunk, May lights them. One for Mack, who died in the rubble a hero, one for Polly, who died getting Robin out, for Daisy, who no one else remembers, for Elena, who was the only one strong enough to try to fight. For Jemma, who stood between a Kree guard and a room full of children. For Phil.
She lets them burn down. She watches the wax pool.
She wonders what she could have done differently.
A year after Jemma’s death, she watches Fitz barely live a life, forcing himself through his days for the sake of his daughter. Melinda is the only one left carrying the faith that next time, they’ll do better. She decides to add one for each of them, too.
-
After her mother dies, Alya spends each day either fiercely independent or incredibly clingy.
Fitz and Jemma had always been protective of her, only ever letting her out of their sight if May was there, but the trauma of losing Jemma had quietly changed the smart little girl. She can see that her father is only trying to be happy for her, and that he is not succeeding.
May had always loved the little girl with Jemma’s eyes and mannerisms and wit, but after, when Alya starts to cling to her too, she finds herself clinging back.
-
When Alya turns ten, Fitz manages to make her a cupcake.
Alya reacts with utter joy and takes her time, savoring each bite like it’s the most important thing she’s ever eaten.
Fitz is trying his best to be cheerful. It’s a little painful to see, but no one is about to call him out on it. Two years is not nearly enough time to grieve the love of your life.
At some point, Alya pulls him down to sit with her. May can’t hear everything, but she knows she hears “Mumma,” and she watches Fitz crumble, holding his daughter tight.
May has to leave the room. She doesn’t need another reminder of how she’d failed to protect them. She remembers every day.
-
Twelve year old Alya Fitzsimmons and thirteen year old Owen Shaw are inseparable. This is, objectively, hilarious.
Owen is a mini Deke. It’s very, very weird. Once, May had pointed out to Fitz that they both had brown eyes and she remembered Deke with blue ones, and he’d launched into a full lecture about recessive genes before he realized she was teasing him about Deke inheriting his eye color.
Fitz doesn’t know what to do with the puppy love blooming in front of them. They’re sitting in a corner, watching the kids in their makeshift classroom. Alya and Owen are blatantly passing notes back and forth.
“Tell me they’ll at least get to twenty before they get married,” he quietly says.
She almost laughs, which is closer than she usually gets. “I don’t think we have those same social mores here, Fitz.”
He runs his hand over his face. His wedding ring, still somehow gleaming, briefly catches the light.
“I wonder if we actually meet him,” he says.
“You’re going to be nicer this time, aren’t you?”
Fitz rolls his eyes. “I think I’ll be nice to my baby grandson, Melinda, yes.”
She nudges his shoulder with her elbow. “Fatherhood has softened you, but I remember when you could be a complete ass.”
He nudges back. She almost sees a smile.
-
From the very beginning, May has taught the children of the Lighthouse self-defense.
She makes it into games for the little ones, into subtle strength training and cardio that they don’t even know they’re doing. By the time they’re teenagers, they already have seen enough to ask May to really teach them how to fight.
Every time May sees a swirl of dark hair, she thinks of long hours spent in a real training room with a lost young woman who, at some point, adopted her and Phil as her parents.
She misses them every day. She goes back to her bunk and curls up with Robin, who makes a little less sense every year but always remembers that May is her mother.
-
They’re having tea in a corner of the Exchange when Fitz abruptly changes the subject from the Lighthouse’s water supply.
“I think I’m going to give Alya Jemma’s ring for her birthday,” he says.
He’s looking down at his mug instead of at her. She watches him fidget with his collar, knowing that Jemma’s ring has been on a chain around his neck since he’d slipped off her finger.
“Oh?”
She doesn’t know what he wants her to say.
“It was always meant to go to- to go to Alya after,” he said. He’s never said that she’s dead out loud, and five years later, May thinks he never will.
“Thirteen is a good birthday for it,” she says.
He nods. He looks so lost. He always does, really.
“You’re allowed to live your life still, you know,” she says, nearly whispering.
Finally, he looks at her. She thought she had gotten used to his expressions, but the exhaustion behind his eyes strikes her anew.
“Neither of us has been alive for years now, Melinda,” he says. He doesn’t mean Jemma.
He’s right. She doesn’t need to agree out loud. She takes another sip of her tea instead, and they sit in silence for the rest of the afternoon.
-
As Robin gets older, her drawings get better and better.
Most of the time, May knows they aren’t for her- not for this version of her, anyway.
Sometimes, though, Robin gifts her with pieces of their old life. She sees Elena and Mack in one, sitting together in an unfamiliar living room. Daisy, coming out of her terrigenesis cocoon. Bobbi and Hunter embracing. Fitz and Jemma, and what she thinks is the moment he proposed.
She only ever gets one of her and Phil. She thinks it’s from a time he was stitching her up on the Bus.
May files them away in her desk drawer. She cherishes each one. She hates them, too.
-
Every year, they mark the day the world shattered together.
For the fifteenth anniversary, Fitz manages to find a bottle of crappy whiskey. She doesn’t ask how.
They sit on the floor of Fitz’s bunk and crack it open, clinking their tin cups that pass for glasses and throwing the first shot back without needing a verbal toast.
May has no issue, but Fitz gags.
She scoffs. “Lightweight.”
He rolls his eyes at her and pours them both another shot. “I used to be able to drink you all under the table.”
She snorts. “Not me.”
“Yes, you.”
“Never happened.”
“Well, you always stopped several rounds before I did. What do you call that?”
They throw the second round back. This time, he doesn’t choke, but he briefly grimaces.
“Intelligence,” May says. “Wisdom.”
“I think that was a cop out.”
“I gave great advice to you kids. It’s not my fault you ignored it.”
He gives her a pointed look as she pours a third round. “It’s a little weird for you to still call me a kid. I’m forty-five. My daughter is a teenager, god help me.”
She shrugs. “And I just turned sixty, what do you want?”
They both down the third shot and, without speaking, agree to pause on the drinking. Considering how little they get to do it, it’s a recipe for a hangover.
Fitz leans back on his hands. “Doesn’t matter. You’re still stronger than women half your age. You’re still the loveliest woman in the room.”
She glances up. For a second, he’s looking at her with mischief in his eyes, and she remembers the cocky man she used to know. She hasn’t seen that look on him since- she doesn’t even know how long it’s been. She’s pleasantly warm from the whiskey and she’s sure he is, too.
He stated it like it was a fact. He isn’t quite flirting with her. She doesn’t think he’s even capable of that anymore. It’s still…something.
Eventually, they have a few rounds more. They’re able to trade some of the less painful stories they can think of- the pranks Daisy played on the Bus. How long Mack took to ask out Elena.
He never mentions Phil. She never mentions Jemma.
She wakes up the next morning to a headache and an arm thrown over her waist.
She sits up and looks over her shoulder. Fitz is fast asleep. She doesn’t know how they ended up curled together, clothed and on top of his quilt.
She leaves before he wakes up.
-
At Alya’s eighteenth birthday party, Owen proposes.
In the course of a generation, that’s become the norm again. Life is cheap in the Lighthouse. No one waits. They all know better than that.
It’s lovely, watching Alya delightedly accept and Owen pick her up and spin her around. Their friends laugh and hug. It’s a moment of pure joy in a place that doesn’t get enough of it.
Alya embraces both of them with tears in her eyes and for a moment, they are that happy, too.
-
Alya fusses over her father. Over both of them, really.
She manages to always get fresh fruit for the two of them, probably off of her charm alone. It becomes another one of their weekly rituals, sitting together and savoring whatever Alya brings.
Fitz and Alya bicker terribly, although good naturedly, about how Fitz is supposed to be taking care of her, not the other way around.
“Shut up and eat your fruit, old man.” She presses a smacking kiss against his forehead and kisses May’s cheek before she disappears back down the hallway to get up to god knows what with her fiancé.
“It’s hard for her sometimes, I think,” May says.
“What is?”
She shrugs. “That she’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
It’s such an obvious fact to her that she doesn’t think twice about saying it out loud.
Fitz’s whole body goes rigid.
“Melinda,” he says, “you know that’s not. That’s not true. Anymore.”
She doesn’t think that’s the truth. He might want it to be. He might even half believe it. But she knows better.
Still, when he brushes his fingers against hers, she takes his hand and laces their fingers together.
-
There are days every year where they worry about each other.
Hers are Daisy’s birthday and Phil’s death day. On those days, without any explanation, Fitz will be by her side for as many hours as he can manage.
She doesn’t wallow on those days. She gets up. She teaches self defense to the kids. She reads. Still, he stays at her elbow, hovering and not hovering all at once, making sure she eats and drinks water and that she never has to be alone.
On Jemma’s birthday and death day, he simply doesn’t function.
This is devastating to Alya. They both know it. But as Alya gets older, as her life becomes inextricably entwined with Owen’s, she starts to understand.
May always shows up at his bunk with books and tea. For the first eight years or so, he drops his head onto her lap and just…barely gets through the day.
Eventually, though, he sits up with her and reads.
Those are the nights where they don’t even pretend that they’re not going to sleep in the same bed. Sometimes, he still says Jemma’s name in his sleep. She doesn’t think he’ll ever stop.
Still, when she wakes up, before she slips away, she watches him sleep for just a moment.
-
Alya tells them that Owen doesn’t have a ring he can use as his wedding band. All the jewelry left in the Lighthouse is heirloom or stolen from the dead. Owen was an orphan, and none of them are comfortable buying the latter.
For a few days, Fitz is even quieter than usual. They’re all having dinner when he brings it up again.
“So, uhm. I was thinking about something. And please know that you can say no. I would more than understand if you did.”
“Okay,” Alya cautiously says.
Fitz rests his hands on the table. He’s fidgeting with his wedding ring, spinning it on his finger like he’s done for years and years.
“Owen. You can use my ring. If you want.”
There is a ringing silence. None of them had thought he’d ever take it off.
“Fitz,” Owen says. “That’s...” There’s a shake in his voice. He doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“You two talk about it. You don’t have to tell me now.” He shrugs deeply. Still, he spins the ring.
Alya lets out a sob and throws her arms around him.
“It’s a lovely place for a wedding,” Robin suddenly says. “A courthouse. Or a forest. I don’t remember.”
She tucks back into her food.
May smiles at the memory of a very good day, at the remembrance of Andrew’s deep, baritone laughter. “Courthouse is me,” she says softly.
Fitz drops his cheek onto Alya’s hair. “Forest is me.” He smiles.
-
After Alya and Owen are married, May and Fitz tell them everything they can about the time loop.
They pull out the unfinished blueprints Fitz worked on with Jemma all those years ago. Fitz, for once, isn’t sad when he sees something of hers. He’s proud. This is the first time Alya has gotten to see their work- their real work, not just his constant maintenance of the Lighthouse that he’s slowly been teaching some of the kids for years.
Owen is smart. Alya wouldn’t love him otherwise. May and Fitz both remember Voss telling them that Owen was the one who finished and built the machine, but they’re both convinced that Alya had a part in it, too. Will have a part in it. Owen picks the shard of the time monolith and stares at it like he can will an answer for them into being.
Alya traces over Jemma’s handwriting with her fingertips. Fitz wraps his arm around her shoulders and kisses her forehead.
“You can do this,” he says, his voice full of confidence. “We know you do this. You can help us stop this from happening again.”
And suddenly, he’s the man May used to know, unabashedly cocksure and too smart for his own good, and he's leading another charge.
Alya’s studying the blueprints carefully. She looks at her father.
“You can’t break a time loop, Dad,” she says. Her voice is quiet.
“Yes, you can,” May says. She’s not going to be afraid of this. She has carried the faith, and she’ll carry it until she dies. “Nothing is inevitable.”
May sees Owen deeply considering what she said. Alya, of course, looks back to her dad.
“I didn’t think we could,” Fitz admits. “There are choices we could have- I could have made differently. It was hard.”
“Of course it was,” Owen says. “You were trying to save the entire planet.”
May lets out a bitter laugh. “It wasn’t the first time.”
“And we. Well. We put each other over the world.”
“We did,” May agrees. And she thinks of centipede serum and the months that it bought Phil. He had regretted it every single day, even as they had clung to the borrowed time with both hands.
“It should have been the last, though,” Fitz says, his voice wavering. “I…am not an optimistic man. You all know that. But this? I think I have to believe in it. You kids deserved better than what we gave you.”
May reaches across the table to take his hand. He squeezes hers with a grateful half smile before he turns back to his daughter.
“You did everything you could,” Alya firmly says. “I have never wanted for a thing."
Both of them are crying.
"I know how much you miss her. I know you hung on for me. I love you so much for it.”
Fitz lets go of May’s hand to hug Alya. He takes a deep, shuddering breath before he speaks again. “Well. When all this first happened, I didn’t know you yet, Alya Fitzsimmons. If there’s anyone who can change time, it’s you.”
Alya laughs. “It’s Shaw now.”
Fitz really smiles when he hears her laugh. “I’m old. Leave me alone.”
Owen clears his throat.
“You all deserved better too, you know,” he says. “Your lives shouldn’t have been this hard.”
May takes a deep breath of her own before she manages to speak.
“Okay,” she says. “So let’s make sure that next time, our lives are better.”
They talk late into the night. Owen and Alya are fresh eyes, younger and smarter than Fitz and May are now, and as the four of them bounce ideas around about what the machine still needs to work, the young couple starts to believe. They’ll carry on the torch when she can’t.
Eventually, the two of them leave Fitz and May in her room. Something lingers behind them. It feels like hope.
Fitz is still holding himself like he’s young again. From the way he’s looking at May, she thinks she is, too.
She doesn’t know who initiates that first kiss. Maybe they both do.
-
There are no grand romantic gestures. There is no conversation about their changed relationship.
Instead, it’s a small series of shifts. Fitz always makes sure she has the green tea she likes. May makes sure he actually eats vegetables. It’s the towel he always is ready to toss her when she’s done teaching, the ice pack she hands him without words when his bad hand is cramping up, the comforting press of her shoulder against his arm when they’re forced to be in larger groups.
She doesn’t know what she’d call it. She doesn’t need to. It’s enough to share a bed some nights with someone she trusts again. It’s enough to have someone to sit with in silence.
It’s enough.
-
Alya is twenty and very, very pregnant.
May has been stepping in a lot. There are some things it just helps to have a mother for, so she swallows the lump in her throat and gives the girl all the advice and support she can, just like she did for Jemma all those years ago.
It’s even more painful this time. Alya cries for Jemma just like Jemma cried for her mother.
They’re sitting on the bed in the bunk Alya and Owen share. Alya leans back against the headboard. She’s got a look on her face May had seen hundreds of times on her mother’s. She’s going to ask about something she thinks May won’t want to talk about.
But of course, May will.
“May,” she says, and she stops.
“Ask,” May says back.
“You and my dad. I wouldn’t say you’re a couple. I also wouldn’t say you're not.”
May waits.
“I guess I just want to understand.”
May isn’t surprised by this conversation. She also isn’t surprised Alya is asking her, not Fitz. “There’s an explanation that’s easy, and one that’s a bit of a mess. Which one do you want?”
Alya just looks at her. May sighs.
“The easy explanation is that your dad fell in love with your mother when they were sixteen, and he will never love another person like he still loves her.”
“But I already knew that.”
May nods. “But you already knew that.”
“What about you?”
May takes a deep breath. She doesn’t talk about this. “I had two great loves,” she says. “I was lucky.”
Alya is quiet. Patient. She gives May all the time she needs.
Eventually, May looks into Alya’s eyes. “Full, painful honesty?”
Alya nods. “Full, painful honesty.”
May leans back against the headboard, too.
“I think he and I rotate around each other because we’re the only ones left,” she says. “That is never going to be dates and smiles and another chance at happiness. We both had our happiness a long time ago.” She looks affectionately at Alya. “You help, obviously. Robin does, too. But we just...are what we are, Alya. We’re us. We take care of each other.”
“You love each other, you know.”
“Yes. Yes, we do.” She’s struggling not to cry. A long time ago, she never cried. “But there’s a difference between living for the person you love, and loving a person because you’re the only ones still living.”
“Oh, May.” Alya picks up her hands, squeezing them supportively. May chokes on it again, on how much she is like Jemma.
“I’m sorry you don’t have her,” May says. “You should. All of this is wrong, Alya. Him and I should never even have had a reason…I’m not his person. He’s not mine.”
Alya is crying, too. “You are, though,” she fervently says. “You are. And I just wish I could have known both of you when you were happy.”
“Me too,” May says. “Me, too.”
-
Alya and Owen are both glowing.
May’s holding Deke for the first time. It is, quite possibly, the strangest moment of her life, and that is something she would never say lightly. Her mind keeps flicking back to another jaded kid she’d met, who just wanted Fitz to like him and who chased Daisy with an open heart.
“I don't know what to do with the fact that my baby has a baby,” Fitz admits, to the delighted laughter of his daughter.
Fitz steps just behind May, dropping his chin on her shoulder. “Look at him,” he says, the slightest awe in his voice. May leans back against him.
“Deke,” Owen says. “Deke Shaw.”
Fitz actually laughs. It’s been countless years since May last heard it.
“Deke,” he says. “I like it.”
“Do you want to hold him?” Alya asks.
May knows he does. She turns to face Fitz.
“You remember how to hold a baby, old man?” she teases, and she’s rewarded with an eye roll- but Fitz is still smiling.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re both ancient and you can still kick my ass,” he says, gently taking Deke into his arms.
“Dad!” Alya protests.
“Alya, Deke can’t process language yet,” Owen says. She smacks him on the arm before leaning against him.
Fitz is smiling down at his grandson and May gasps at the sight. For just a second, she’s in a different room, with Jemma in bed and Fitz soothing their newborn daughter.
Fitz glances up at her. “You okay there?”
“Yeah,” she says, and of course, she’s crying. “I’m just- I’m glad we got here.”
Fitz’s eyes turn a little glassy, too. He knows exactly what she means. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m glad we did, too.”